When it comes to things like this, that old saying rings true: if you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can’t afford it anyway.

In fact, we can’t even tell you how much Lamborghini’s new smartphone, dubbed the Tauri 88, will potentially set you back because they haven’t even announced a price yet.

Looking over the hardware specs for this ultra-premium device, you’ll find a Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor under the hood, powering a 5-inch 1920 x 1080 display, 3 GB of RAM, a 20 MP rear camera, an 8 MP front-facing selfie shooter, and 64 GB of internal storage. It ships with Android 4.4. For comparison sake, this puts it right on par with Sony’s latest Xperia Z3.

Based on those specs alone, you might expect to spend around $650 for an unlocked, off-contract device. But since this is Lamborghini we’re talking about, it’d be safe to quadruple that number.

I actually quite like the exterior design of the phone, conceived by Lamborghini’s founder’s son, Tonino Lamborghini. He’s the Italian man in these photos. It certainly looks better than the futile attempt by BlackBerry and Porsche to design their own phones. Tauri 88 is crafted from premium materials like metal and leather. Sliding in and out of your pocket and being exposed to varying amounts of sun, humidity, and temperatures, the leather may very well take on a unique look and feel over time, different for each lucky owner. You know — those who don’t have to ask how much something costs.

But then again, the Tauri 88 feels more like a harkening back to the days of Lamborghini’s yesteryear. Or yester-century, maybe.

If you look closely at the promotional photos, Tonino Lamborghini isn’t posing in anything made later than 1968. In two photos, he’s in an original 1966 Lamborghini Miura and in one other, the Tarui 88 is sitting on the wooden dashboard of his father’s 1968 Lamborghini Riva Aquarama speedboat.

No, a modern supercar-inspired smartphone, especially one packed with some of the latest mobile tech, should sport an exterior of brushed aluminum, or maybe even titanium, along with carbon fiber. Those two components are, after all, what the majority of Lamborghinis are made from these days. (As an aside, does the general shape of this phone remind anyone else of the Motorola Droid RAZR?)

Irregardless of my thoughts, it goes without saying that there are plenty of folks out there who, between them, will scoop up every last one of these that are made. I’ll need to check with our product development guys to see if the lucky few will be able to rock an invisibleSHIELD on their high-priced superphone.

This isn’t a how-to guide. In fact, you should probably avoid trying this at home. Stories like Conner Bruggemann’s are the exception, not the norm. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about the fun stuff.

—

You’re 16 years old. You’ve just started your junior year of high school. For the last two years, you’ve worked as a busboy, cleaning tables at a local barbecue joint. In total, you’ve managed to save around 10 grand.

Your father is a former Vice President of JP Morgan. He traded stocks on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He tells stories about the “good ol days,” to which you pay close attention.

After watching the interest in your bank account grow at an abysmally slow rate, your grandfather, hearing of your frustration, mentioned something about investing in the stock market. Your dad agrees to be the account holder, since you’re still a minor, and now you have your own E-Trade account, which you can access from your iPhone.

You start safe, buying positions in major companies like Apple. But then you get curious. Or maybe greedy. Or maybe a bit of both.

Meanwhile, since you’re 16, you go to school every day, Monday through Friday. In Physics class, you buy and sell shares from your iPhone underneath your desk. During lunch, you’re checking your shares, keeping a watchful eye on your cash hoard. In Spanish, you’re back at it again, making six figure trades while your teacher drones on about gatos y perros.

While doing some research, you stumble upon a company nobody has ever heard of before. American Community Development Group (ACYD). Unlike Apple, their stock is trading for a third of a penny per share. Intriguing, you tell yourself. Intriguing enough that now, you slowly begin selling off your positions in the behemoths like Apple and Verizon, and start acquiring major positions in ACYD.

Over the next twelve months, your nest egg grows. And grows some more. One year after you’ve started, your equity is now worth more than $300,000.

You’ve done well. Do you keep going? Do you play it safe and cash out? Maybe a little of both?

You buy yourself a BMW. Your parents? Brand new MacBooks. Your siblings? New iPads. Your father takes part of your earnings out of play and puts roughly half of it in savings. He trusts you, but he doesn’t trust the market.

You should follow Mike on Twitter for more great tech insights and good conversation. Be sure to say hello! You can also keep up with Mike on Facebook, or on Google+.

]]>http://blog.zagg.com/connor-bruggemann-penny-stocks-day-trader/feed/0The Day the Music Died, An Ode to the iPod Classic [Opinion]http://blog.zagg.com/apple-discontinues-ipod-classic/
http://blog.zagg.com/apple-discontinues-ipod-classic/#commentsThu, 02 Oct 2014 13:29:18 +0000Mike Beauchamphttp://www.zagg.com/community/blog/?p=62442

As Apple gave life to two new iPhones last month, they also pulled a white sheet over the corpse of another product: the iPod Classic. In its 13 years of life, it became the world’s favorite MP3 player, offering its users storage of up to 160 GB of music in a compact device that fit easily in their pocket. The Click Wheel (and later the Scroll Wheel) became a new type of input device to help users scroll through massive music libraries with ease, despite not having a touch display.

And I knew if I had my chance, I could make those people dance, and maybe they’d be happy for a while…

The iPod was always a product destined to be cannibalized by its own successor, the iPhone, which would come six years later in June 2007. By both nature and design, nobody wanted to carry two devices anymore, when one would serve the purpose of both.

And while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown…

As I stare lovingly at my own silver 5th-gen 120 GB iPod Classic, I can’t help but think this little marvel was struck down too soon.

Something touched me deep inside, the day the music died.

Follow along for a moment, as I let my imagination wonder.

iPod Classic sales have sharply declined, year over year, since the iPhone launched seven years ago. Nevertheless, Apple still made more money than its Apple TV business, which it still considers a “hobby.” The difference is, Apple TV has a future in its category of dominating the living room. iPod’s future has been eaten away by our smartphones, car stereos, and a prolific number of music streaming services.

Here’s where my imagination is running wild.

Say, for a moment, Apple took the last-made 5th-gen iPod Classic, kept the storage at 160 GB as it was, and simply added Bluetooth and WiFi. Now, you have a device that can remain connected. You could wirelessly sync new music to it from your computer. You could use AirPlay to play music on your TV or AirPlay-compatible speakers. You could use wireless Bluetooth headphones, or connect it wirelessly in the car.

With WiFi connectivity, you could also enable iPod classic to run a handful of music apps like Pandora, Spotify, or Beats Music. Why? Because that gives users the best of both worlds. They’d have their favorite music stored locally on the iPod for offline playback, but while at home or the office, would have access to a much larger selection of tunes.

Why would all this matter?

Two reasons. First, you wouldn’t be using the battery of your smartphone to listen to music, since very few phones last an entire day as it is. Carrying the iPod with you would be an option; you wouldn’t have to take it everywhere if you weren’t going to need it. But when you did, you’d have everything you needed (and then some) without tying up your phone.

Second, you’d have a much larger music selection available offline, without having to eat up your limited data plans to stream. Spotify offers something like 20 million songs on demand (if you have a Premium account), but streaming all day every day will chew through your data cap in much less than the 30 days between monthly billing cycles.

With the price of electronic components for WiFi and Bluetooth chips as low as they are these days, and especially when considering Apple’s access to major volume discounts, it wouldn’t be a pricey proposition, nor would it be difficult to integrate. Software updates could still be pushed out via iTunes, and nothing else would have to change (although I’d love to see the new model use a Lightning adapter instead of 30-pin cord).

It’s not likely Apple will bring back the iPod Classic, but it’s fun to think about what it could have been.

I met a girl that sang the blues, and I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away…

—–

You should follow Mike on Twitter for more great tech insights and good conversation. Be sure to say hello! You can also keep up with Mike on Facebook, or on Google+.

]]>http://blog.zagg.com/apple-discontinues-ipod-classic/feed/0The Star Trek Tricorder—In Real Lifehttp://blog.zagg.com/the-star-trek-tricorder-in-real-life/
http://blog.zagg.com/the-star-trek-tricorder-in-real-life/#commentsThu, 15 May 2014 15:32:07 +0000Teresa Eliashttp://www.zagg.com/community/blog/?p=56675If you’re a Star Trek fan, you know the most useful device in the universe is a tricorder. With its ability to scan and tell you the makeup of every object you come in contact with, in addition to its ability to tell you what’s wrong with an injured red shirt, a tricorder is handy, all knowing, and all around something you never want to leave in your quarters back on the ship.

The SCiO is a small, handheld device that tells you information about the objects around you in real time.

But it’s not real…right? Maybe it is. It’s not named a tricorder, but you can fund this similar device, called SCiO, on KickStarter right now to help make it become a reality. Using a tiny spectrometer, SCiO will give you relevant information about the objects in the world around you quickly and easily through a corresponding smartphone app.

Estimated to come to market in January of 2015, this scanning device will be able to:

Tell you the nutritional facts of food

See how ripe a piece of fruit is, through the peel

Give you a status update on the health of your plants

Analyze soil

Authenticate medications or supplements

Gives users the ability to upload and tag the spectrum of any material to the SCiO database

This video offers a great overview of everything SCiO will be able to do.

My favorite Apple concept designer, Martin Hajek, is at it again. For months now, we’ve heard rumors that Apple will be introducing a new Apple TV set top box later this year, and he’s put his best guesses into what that might look like. We’ve also read reports that Apple has patented a touchscreen remote control, and Martin has included that in his renderings, as well.

The only major things I’d disagree about is that we won’t see it appear in the three color options he shows. I’m also not entirely convinced the remote will have an infrared blaster. As it stands now, you can already use any iOS device as a remote control for Apple TV, as long as it’s connected to the same WiFi network. If I had to guess, I’d say Apple will do away with infrared in the next remote altogether, especially if it’s anything like the one picture. It’s already going to need WiFi connectivity anyway to find and display content, so why not have it connect to the Apple TV the same way?

Regardless, these renders are beautiful and I think they can help us visualize a fairly solid idea of what to expect later this year. Check out Martin’s full gallery of images at the source link below.

We’ve seen plenty of renderings and concepts of what an Apple smartwatch could look like, should it ever be produced. We’ve seen more than a few smartwatches from other manufacturers already make their way to market – the Pebble, the Galaxy Gear, and the Sony SmartWatch – as well as rumors of other major players working on their own. Microsoft, LG, Nokia, Google, and Asus are all said to have such a product in the works.

However, we don’t love any of them. We don’t love the concepts we’ve seen, or the actual products that have already made it to market. The problem is, they all LOOK like smartwatches and less like something classy we’d actually wear. Remember the old Casio calculator watches? I liken nearly all of the existing smartwatches to wearing something like that. Sure, you’ll have a small handful of people who fork over the cash to add another gadget to their arsenal of technology, but that doesn’t validate the current concepts as “great.”

This concept by designer Gabor Balogh though; now this is something really great. Unlike current smartwatches, it actually looks more like a watch than a smartwatch. It looks like something you could wear out in public without being stared at. And most importantly, more than all of the above, it looks like the perfect combination of both form and function.

Whether we’ll ever see a smartwatch that looks anything like this remains yet to be seen. Circular displays like the one shown in Gabor’s render aren’t impossible to manufacture, but you can expect to pay a premium for them. If there’s any company out there who could create such a product as the one depicted below, it’s certainly Apple. Let us know what you think in the comments after you take a look.

]]>http://blog.zagg.com/iwatch-concept/feed/5Remember What You Studied In Your Sleephttp://blog.zagg.com/remember-what-you-studied-in-your-sleep/
http://blog.zagg.com/remember-what-you-studied-in-your-sleep/#commentsMon, 27 Jan 2014 15:00:53 +0000Teresa Eliashttp://www.zagg.com/community/blog/?p=53456Research suggests that sleep helps solidify our memories, helping facts and figures move from our short-term memory to the long-term memory storage areas in our brains. Now, a company called Sheepdog Sciences, based out of San Francisco, is capitalizing on this knowledge with a wristband that promises to help the memory-producing process along.

While the science behind the production of memories may be slightly beyond a layperson’s intellectual grasp, the concept of the wristband is simple. First, you listen to some music while you’re studying. Then, the wristband monitors your heartbeat, and once it recognizes that it’s slowing and you’re in a deep state of sleep (REM sleep), it replays the same music. This “trigger” supposedly helps your brain commit your studies to your long-term memory stores.

The wristband will also have a mobile app tied to its information, so you can keep track of your studies and further optimize your time, energy—and your sleep. No definitive word on when this wearable tech will be available for purchase, but the scientists behind it have conducted some memory studies and have already reported significant results using their new technology.

Not that we’d expect him to say anything different, but Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a note to employees thanking them for their efforts in 2013 and promising a “big year” in 2014. Obviously, he didn’t give any specific plans or products, but come to think of it, 2013 was a fairly quiet year.

The iPad got a refresh with the new iPad Air, the iPad mini got a Retina Display, the iPhone 5s got Touch ID and a new 64-bit A7 processor, and the MacBook Pro lineup was updated with some incremental spec bumps. By and large, the only brand new thing to come out of Cupertino last year was the new Mac Pro, which went on sale just before the end of the year.

What are you hoping to see from Apple this year? Any guesses? Let us know in the comments below. I’ll share some of your answers on my Twitter.

It’s time for the holiday shopping, and all of us have at least one person on our list that gets harder to buy for every year. I don’t want to give a gift card, I want you to know that I know you! I want it to be something that you’ll actually use, not just put on a shelf in the back of the closet.

The Verge Holiday Gift Guide has great ideas to help you find the perfect gift for everybody on your list. The Guide is divided into locational categories such as Cook It Up, Lean Back, and On The Street. Or you can check out genres: Cameras, Books, Games, and more.

These are the hottest and the best products these different categories have to offer. You won’t go wrong if you use this as your road map to the perfect gift.

And if the person on your list happens to be me, I’ll give you a hint. My perfect gift is under the tablets section and rhymes with Boogle Dexus Nevin.

]]>http://blog.zagg.com/find-the-perfect-gift-for-anybody-using-the-verge-holiday-gift-guide/feed/0A $25 Investment in Bitcoin in 2009 Has Made This College Student Over $1 Millionhttp://blog.zagg.com/25-bitcoin-investment-turns-into-1-million/
http://blog.zagg.com/25-bitcoin-investment-turns-into-1-million/#commentsWed, 30 Oct 2013 21:12:18 +0000Mike Beauchamphttp://www.zagg.com/community/blog/?p=50914

The ebb and flow of the virtual currency called Bitcoin has fascinated me since its inception in 2009. I’ve never bought so much as a fraction of a coin, but I enjoy spectating from the sidelines. As of today, 1 BTC is worth $208 USD. Think about that for a moment. A virtual currency, as volatile as the weather in Kansas, backed by nothing, is worth 208 times the value of the U.S. dollar.

If you’re not familiar with BTC already, click here. Assuming you are, you’ll enjoy another one of the many “success” stories that has surfaced.

Back in 2009, a college student in Norway, while writing his thesis on encryption technologies, bought about $25 USD worth of the brand new virtual currency and like many, forgot all about it. His girlfriend was annoyed — he spent $25 real dollars for 5,000 fake coins. Fast forward to April of this year when Bitcoin really started getting media attention, and the value skyrocketed. In January, a single BTC was worth $13 USD. In April, it went as high as $260. Thinking back on that purchase he made in 2009, Kristoffer Koch remembered his 5,000 Bitcoin. After finally decrypting his password and logging into his virtual wallet, he realized he was sitting on the same pile of 5,000 Bitcoin, but it was now worth $885,520 dollars in real money (about $177 each).

Like any of us would, he quickly cashed out a sizable chunk — 1,000 BTC — worth enough to pay cash for a flat in a higher-end part of Oslo, Norway, where he lived. His girlfriend was no longer annoyed. What’s better: doing some quick math using today’s $208 BTC price and assuming he still has the remaining 4,000 Bitcoins, he still has most of the cash equivalent to what he had in April — $832,000 — since the value has gone from $125 to $208 in the last 30 days alone. Had he not sold 1,000 BTC 6 months ago, his original stash of 5,000 BTC would be worth $1.04 million.

There’s still money to be made in Bitcoin, but it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever see the same kind of potential as stories like this.